To amuse and enlighten

Just Post This to #Whitewhine

My iLife is so confusing. I bought all of these shiny gadgets with fruit on them because the TV told me to, and now I fritter away my days trying to solve problems I didn’t have before I spent $5,000 on gadgets I don’t need.

I like my pictures, but thanks to the Four Horsemen of the Cloudpocalypse (iPhoto, iCloud, iPad, iTunes), I have several copies of each on every device. I have pictures of people I don’t even know, like this nice lady:

Don't tell me about IP addresses, you punks. Just make this damn thing tell my TV thing what to do.

I’m pretty sad these days. I think it’s because I have nine copies of Adele’s “Someone Like You” that play on loop on my iPhone. I mean, what did this guy do to her? Or is it her own fault for not bucking up and moving on?

Every time I charge my phone, I get another copy of a sad song and a picture of my neighbor’s crazy chattering tot. That kid just talks too much. I know he’s only four and he’s excited about playing soccer, but come on. Kid, I need to get into my condo and figure out why Time Machine (where’s the “i”?) hasn’t been able to successfully back up my MacBook Air for two months.

I’m so frazzled that I just split an infinitive!

Hang on, Siri just burst in and asked me something, totally unprompted. OK, you’re a robot lady and you know where I live. I’m impressed. Now leave me alone. I’m trying to listen to Adele and eat raw cookie dough.

And what about Apple TV not sharing with my computer, like it was designed to? I’ve had that thing for 18 months and it’s never once shared like a big boy. Hopefully we get over the terrible twos soon and everyone starts streaming nicely together like the TV promised me.

That’s the crux of the matter. It’s nobody’s fault but mine that I fall prey to catchy obscure pop tunes (read: low royalties) and shiny objects. But when the world’s largest company tells me “it just works,” I develop a justifiable expectation that that statement is at least marginally true.

My Mac crashes, freezes, and farts just as much as any PC I’ve ever owned. The shattering of my unbreakable iPhone glass was the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to me. Apple’s liberal and misplaced use of the word “sync” keeps me awake most nights, prodded in my dreams by all of the duplicate carnivorous contacts in my four completely different Apple address books. I dumbly paid $99 for MobileMe, and then they started giving away a better version a year later. Why? WHY???!!!

Somehow, Apple has tapped into the vein of consumer vanity, as I discovered upon purchase of my iPad. This acquisition unleashed the beast of iAddiction with which I currently grapple. The five minutes of joy I get from flinging an angry bird at a jerky pig or reading the new Murakami tome in bed without the light on always overpowers the hours I spend trolling Apple support and message boards trying to figure out why none of my crap works the way it’s supposed to.

I’m probably the first tech-savvy yuppie to rant about Apple products on the Internet. Let me do a quick search to confirm…